Behind the Mask: What Communicators Can Learn From Pandemic Isolation
By Ret David North
I have good news and bad news; take it how you will. The good news is that we are starting to see the opportunity to come back to in-person worship again. The bad news is that we are starting to see the opportunity to come back to in-person worship again, and your entire community’s means and interpretation of communication has changed.
We have more learning to do, which can feel exhausting when you already work in what is already an ever-evolving ministry of life.
Let us openly confess what has happened to change communication over the past year and a half. We started with months of near-total isolation, which, for some of us, was indeed total isolation. One’s ability to connect with other human beings and the world around them depended on access to technology, particularly access to high-speed internet. This was an immediate shift in communication. The way you talk with people on phone calls, though you carry the same conversations on the same topics that you did before, have their own subtle differences. The greetings and farewells you use are different, dynamics like confrontation, interruption, and continuity are often different, and the timbre of the voice you hear is altered by the tiny microphone contained in your phone. Video call technology had to heavily adapt to catch up with the skyrocketing demand, and even then, most of us recall various forms of interference due to the constraints of so much global use of this kind of software. Which side did you take in the argument of looking into the camera versus making “eye contact?”
In a general sense, our tolerance for verbal conversations experienced a steep decrease. The thousands of memes about how this conversation or that “could have been an email [or better yet, a text message]” flooded the internet with sudden relevance to nearly everyone. When previously you would berate your child for texting you from the other room, you may now prefer it so that neither of you needs to yell. As you may already know, the way we put together what we have to say via text or email is very different from how we organize our thoughts verbally in the moment and depending on how practiced you are in textual communication, it may be quicker or far too tedious for you to communicate via email or text. Some of us became so engrossed in textual communication that our thoughts started to organize themselves that way, rather than the way we would typically follow them in verbal conversations. Some of us even began to use emojis as their own language, thereby establishing a strange language barrier over social media between ourselves and our peers based on emoji usage.
There were pros and cons for everyone, varying from person-to-person, but the swift change in communication that occurred when everything suddenly needed to move to virtual means immediately made some permanent changes. We cannot simply jump back to pre-pandemic culture; as we have already, we must evolve, and take our social isolation as a learning experience for how communication may have been deficient before such sudden change.
Each method of communicating serves its own purpose. Use each method with consideration to what you need to communicate and what you need to gain from your audience in this endeavor.
In-Person Meetings
Verbal in-person conversations have many moving pieces to them. A study by Albert Mehrabian found that when the message you are trying to communicate pertains to opinions and emotions, only 7% of your message is directly contained in the words you speak. More of your message (about 38%) is paralinguistic, or contained in the way you say the words (what tone you choose, which part of your vocal register you stay around, the speed at which you speak, and the words you choose to use). Your audience gathers most of your message (over 55%) from facial and body expression(s).
The way you listen to others also communicates a great deal of your own message without you having said anything. Active listening is an important skill which, done effectively, demonstrates to the speaker that you not only understand, but respect, what they are trying to say. Most responses in active listening are physical, rather than verbal, but the subtlety to this facet of in-person communication is the basis for trust and respect, and further, for the efficiency of the whole conversation.
It is important to keep this in mind from a relative standpoint because of what we lose and gain with each other form of communication. Handled consciously, verbal communication enables the clearest and most centralized amount of empathy and authenticity in a conversation.
In-Person, Call, Email, or Text?
In-person conversations are effective in building trusting, respectful, and empathetic relationships, which can be important for first meetings and for communicating and discussing topics that are especially emotionally charged. Do not, however, overuse in-person communication: if there is one thing the pandemic has taught us, it is that much communication, especially for short and/or “emotionless” (logistical) topics and messages, must be efficient and not so tedious that the message itself immediately becomes misinterpreted or ignored entirely.
Video calls already provide you with fewer moving pieces, which can be a little bit easier to tackle. However, when your audience only sees you basically from the neck up, your facial expressions immediately have more weight on what you are trying to say because your audience has a smaller area to focus on and interpret. In the same way, tone becomes equally more important in audio-only phone calls. Calls should be leveraged for messages seeking mutual understanding. The topics of conversation are typically less emotionally charged, so you don’t need such intimacy as is provided in-person, and phone calls become more intimate the longer they go on, which can quickly become uncomfortable in a work-based relationship. One big key in call-based communication is convenience, for you and for your audience. You do not have to go anywhere to get everyone you need to speak with on the same page, and all of you can dial into a call while doing other things for efficiency’s sake.
Emails are best for rhetorical topics (in other words, you don’t need to expect a response other than perhaps questions). Using calls or meetings for these topics feels tedious to your audience, but a sense of formality is still necessary here. Continue to be mindful of the limitations of textual communication, which lacks tone, facial/physical expression, and any guarantee of active listening from your audience.
If you need a quick response on a quick topic from a small group of people (which seems more specific than it actually is), text messages are the way to go. Text messages are also great for less formal topics and less time-sensitive topics. The same limitations apply, but it is also easy to set your own communication norms via text based on how the other person(s) choose to text.
Above all else, be patient with anyone and everyone on the receiving end of communication from you. Some of us greatly benefited from being isolated from others at the beginning of the pandemic, and so coming back in-person after being graciously required to be left alone is difficult for us. Listening is as important as speaking, especially in how you choose to do so, and as a leading figure in your community, one of the most important things you can do is to make yourself someone who is easy to talk to, no matter the method.